jordan peterson phenomena

Jordan Peterson is a former Harvard professor and current professor of psychology at the University of Toronto in Canada. He has been giving speeches everywhere anybody will take him over the last year. What started his rise in the public's eye was that he uploaded on youtube his videos of himself. The initial momentum was from his opposition to a bill in Canada that required transgender people to be called whatever pronoun they want to be called, or face a fine. He was vehemently against it, saying he would go to jail and hunger strike. His main point was that it compromised free speech.

His main topics are mostly the dangers of the far left when it comes to identity politics in this important time in history, and the pc culture and fragility of free speech. You really just have to watch a youtube video of his to understand.

I find his messages to be simple and I mostly agree with them. Sometimes I do not, but he is a fun listen. Here is a youtube link to him being interviewed on the topic of feminism and the gender pay gap (people are obsessed with this subject obv).

He is mischaracterized as a far right supporter because many feel threatened by him and wish to tarnish his image. Basically calling someone far right is the new racist.

Ok, i watched one of his videos. He made a claim that 'no attempt to reduce poverty has ever worked.' Pretty clearly this is false, and he seems like an imbecile to me for making a claim like that. Nathan Robinsons article all seems correct to me.

There were many discussions about him throughout LP and the Truth Discussion thread.

While I value is insights in psychology and his views on free speech, much of his conservative ideas about philosophy and religion don't sit well with me (his ideas about God, morality and truth). Here's recent debate where Dillahunty dismantles much of those ideas while Peterson struggles to defend himself..

He's pretty spot on with some pretty basic but forgotten tenets of rational behavior I just feel that so many groups are pulling him in different directions, then being exposed as some charlatan. It's like a brain tournament vs the world on a whole myriad of tangents. He WAS made famous because of the first Rogan podcast appearance for god's sake. Now the dude is going after Sam Harris when he really doesn't have to.

The biggest problem with Peterson is that he indulges every group out there who are practical blackbelts at their respective beliefs - of course he's going to get "exposed". He should mostly stick to free speech and correctling this irrational progressive trend that's kicking people from their jobs just for being in a bad mood and tweeting shit.

idk. I'm transgender woman. Getting misgendered hurts. Its a honest mistake though. There are some evil people out there who purposely misgender transgender people. Intending to harm.
I think there should be a law against the F word, N word, and purposely misgendering transgender people.
Because these words harm people, and its hate speech. Its not love speech, that's for sure. Its hate speech.

On May 12 2018 02:55 deathstar wrote:
idk. I'm transgender woman. Getting misgendered hurts. Its a honest mistake though. There are some evil people out there who purposely misgender transgender people. Intending to harm.
I think there should be a law against the F word, N word, and purposely misgendering transgender people.
Because these words harm people, and its hate speech. Its not love speech, that's for sure. Its hate speech.

only somebody profoundly stupid would advocate for outlawing words.

Do you see now Loco what happens with the idiotic hate speech laws you support? one day a maniac like this might wield the power of censorship you want to craft, fool.

On May 12 2018 02:55 deathstar wrote:
idk. I'm transgender woman. Getting misgendered hurts. Its a honest mistake though. There are some evil people out there who purposely misgender transgender people. Intending to harm.
I think there should be a law against the F word, N word, and purposely misgendering transgender people.
Because these words harm people, and its hate speech. Its not love speech, that's for sure. Its hate speech.

only somebody profoundly stupid would advocate for outlawing words.

Do you see now Loco what happens with the idiotic hate speech laws you support? one day a maniac like this might wield the power of censorship you want to craft, fool.

I'm not a maniac. Hate speech laws protect minorities.
My friend is African american father of a few daughters. He posted a video on facebook of the Ku-Klux-Klan setting fire to a cross. The klan people were saying they were regrouping. And things.
Should it be legal for groups to form to hate minorities? Because my friend is afraid, for himself and his children.
you think its okay for these maniacs to go around using the N-word? It should be against the law.

People on the airways, talking about eliminating queer people from society. Credential doctors, who are telling parents transgender women mentally ill men, who are rapists of children and women.
and its then that I need Jesus. Cause I need to forgive people who call me a child rapist when a child's well being is more important to me than my own. The doctor is going to cause unacceptance of gay and trans people in schools, churches, workplaces, families. Which is hostile to LGBT lives. Also going to be an influencing factor in transgender child suicide, transgender adolescent suicide and transgender adult suicide. The doctor wants to kill transgender people. She wants to eliminate all the queer people from society. Slanderous as hell to call all transwomen child and women rapists.
There should be a law in place, that makes this doctor call transgender people by their correct pronouns because that law will protect human life. And human life is more important than freedom of speech.

Jordan Peterson misrepresented the law, there is nothing in it that criminalises the use of certain pronouns. And I agree that outlawing words is an illegitimate infringement on free speech. He got famous in part because of bad reading comprehension. He abandoned his socialist views from a reading comprehension error as well. (He thought George Orwell was anti-socialist). The guy has some reading comprehension issues apparently.

I don't think hate speech should be outlawed either. However there are some examples where one may want to restrict speech. For example should people be allowed to put pornographic imagery in public spaces? I don't think so, so i am not in favour of unlimited free speech, i think America is a model example of good freedom of speech laws though, and any civilised society would have at least the standards that america has.

On May 12 2018 02:55 deathstar wrote:
idk. I'm transgender woman. Getting misgendered hurts. Its a honest mistake though. There are some evil people out there who purposely misgender transgender people. Intending to harm.
I think there should be a law against the F word, N word, and purposely misgendering transgender people.
Because these words harm people, and its hate speech. Its not love speech, that's for sure. Its hate speech.

only somebody profoundly stupid would advocate for outlawing words.

Do you see now Loco what happens with the idiotic hate speech laws you support? one day a maniac like this might wield the power of censorship you want to craft, fool.

I'm not a maniac. Hate speech laws protect minorities.
My friend is African american father of a few daughters. He posted a video on facebook of the Ku-Klux-Klan setting fire to a cross. The klan people were saying they were regrouping. And things.
Should it be legal for groups to form to hate minorities? Because my friend is afraid, for himself and his children.
you think its okay for these maniacs to go around using the N-word? It should be against the law.

People on the airways, talking about eliminating queer people from society. Credential doctors, who are telling parents transgender women mentally ill men, who are rapists of children and women.
and its then that I need Jesus. Cause I need to forgive people who call me a child rapist when a child's well being is more important to me than my own. The doctor is going to cause unacceptance of gay and trans people in schools, churches, workplaces, families. Which is hostile to LGBT lives. Also going to be an influencing factor in transgender child suicide, transgender adolescent suicide and transgender adult suicide. The doctor wants to kill transgender people. She wants to eliminate all the queer people from society. Slanderous as hell to call all transwomen child and women rapists.
There should be a law in place, that makes this doctor call transgender people by their correct pronouns because that law will protect human life. And human life is more important than freedom of speech.

You want to ban faggot and nigger, what about spic, wetback, cracker, chink, gook, dago, kike?. What if i change 1 letter, is fagget allowed?, niggar?. What about context? should I go to jail for just uttering to type those words?

If you call somebody dumb you lower their self steem, low self steem is the number one reason for suicide, so when you call somebody dumb you want to kill that people, so banning people from calling others dumb will protect human life and human life is more imoprtant than freedom of speech.

It's funny, I've argued with Loco and Eri before about how even what seems reasonable hate speech laws are dangerous because one day a maniac(s) will missuse this power and cause great harm, and out of nowhere you came and proved my point lol thanks

Cannot stand Jordan Peterson. He abstracts everything into meaningless jargon, bullshits about archetypes, and is basically a gateway drug for the alt-right. He often says something vague and then when someone claims it means something concrete, he backs away from the position. I'm probably being too reductive and harsh on him, but there aren't enough hours in a human life to devote it to fully understanding every important individual on the planet, and I think I've given enough time (~4 hours in 3 podcasts at 2x speed, and maybe 60 minutes reading other articles about him) to someone I already consider a hack.

I did find his first podcast with Sam Harris enthralling though. Basically they cannot come to an agreement about what is "true", and Jordan has a really interesting perspective on it. His second podcast with Sam and his Rogan podcast are insufferable, talking about dragons and other nonsense archetypes the entire time.

I think JP has some good insights and also ramblings that are not great and don't really seem rooted in anything.

I don't even know what alt-right means anymore, basically gets plastered onto so many reasonable people that it has lost all meaning. Listening to JP is gateway to white supremacy?? or does alt-right just mean conservatism now?

JP is clearly very intelligent and great at phrasing himself. It's sad that he uses these abilities to come up with inflammatory trolly statements rather than present nuanced positions. He does have some valuable insight, some well phrased platitudes, but mixes in some truly stupid (and frankly, dangerous) generalizations that make me disregard him completely and feel like his net contribution to the world is negative.

On May 12 2018 02:55 deathstar wrote:
idk. I'm transgender woman. Getting misgendered hurts. Its a honest mistake though. There are some evil people out there who purposely misgender transgender people. Intending to harm.
I think there should be a law against the F word, N word, and purposely misgendering transgender people.
Because these words harm people, and its hate speech. Its not love speech, that's for sure. Its hate speech.

only somebody profoundly stupid would advocate for outlawing words.

Do you see now Loco what happens with the idiotic hate speech laws you support? one day a maniac like this might wield the power of censorship you want to craft, fool.

No, but I see what it's like when you don't bother to learn what a slippery slope fallacy is: you keep repeating them.

I'm not in favor of banning specific words. It's never been my position. Hate speech isn't reducible to the banning of specific words. If I were to reduce it down, it's the non-acceptance of intolerant speech that has a high likelihood of inciting violence, where it exists to allow individuals to organize and gain power in order to oppress others on the grounds that they are inferior in some way or another.

And free speech isn't a cut and dry issue like most uninformed people take it to be. If it were as simple as allowing people to say what they want whenever they want, there wouldn't be such a long-standing philosophical debate surrounding it among the world's greatest thinkers. Free speech carries its own internal paradox, where your freedom to say something can actively undermine the freedom of another individual, and tolerating all speech would eventually undermine society as a whole. There are very few consensuses in philosophy but some degree of restriction on speech is one of them. The typical strawman or confusion that is perpetuated by unnuanced hacks like Peterson is that the worst that can happen is that you are offended by speech you don't like, which isn't true. It's a conflating of the harm principle and the offense principle, a distinction which people probably learn in undergrad. It's a favorite among edgelords and macho tryhards, "facts over feelings man!".

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. (Mencken)

On May 12 2018 08:06 MezmerizePLZ wrote:
I think JP has some good insights and also ramblings that are not great and don't really seem rooted in anything.

I don't even know what alt-right means anymore, basically gets plastered onto so many reasonable people that it has lost all meaning. Listening to JP is gateway to white supremacy?? or does alt-right just mean conservatism now?

Not really. If you spend any amount of time browsing the JP subreddit, you'll find a fair amount of anti-Semitism there. And it's not just buried either, it frequently gets upvotes. I can provide dozens of links if you don't think this is true. This shouldn't surprise anyone who knows his stance on "the Jewish question" (which he is frequently asked about even at his public talks, which some white nationalists attend). There are a few pictures circulating around of him taking pictures with well known white nationalists, and the main alt-right subreddit lists Jordan Peterson's videos on his version of Cultural Marxism as "recommended propaganda". I don't think he has any Neo-Nazi sympathies (and it hurt him not to have done his due diligence with the pictures) but it's easy to see why the link is made. And let's not forget who raised money for him when he was denied federal funding: it was Lauren Southern and the Rebel Media. That's as alt-right as it gets short of being Richard Spencer himself. There is also the little known fact that his greatest literary influences were fascists or had fascist sympathies themselves.

Edit: I forgot about this video. It's a one hour video from one of the most popular white nationalists on YouTube about how Peterson helps fascists whether he's aware of it or not, basically.
.

>reasonable people

I think I have a good idea of who you think this reasonable group of people are (the so-called "intellectual dark web'') and I would say that in the case of Peterson, there is very little that is reasonable about him. It's pretty easy to see once you start doing some digging. He has some tradcon views that are bolstered by Jungian mysticism. He dabbles into historical revisionism (e.g. Hitler didn't really want to win the war, he just wanted to cause a ruckus and kill as many people as possible) and believes some pretty weird things like ancient peoples knew about the double helix structure of DNA.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. (Mencken)